


Never

by ColorInPlatinum



Category: RWBY
Genre: Origin Story, Pre-Canon, headcanon heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 12:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11417943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorInPlatinum/pseuds/ColorInPlatinum
Summary: the memory of his life before salem is fuzzy, tainted with pain and unwanted memories, but there is one day that will never be scrubbed from his mind.





	Never

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mantisbelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantisbelle/gifts).



> inspired by and for the amazing mantisbelle because i adore her work to death and she is very aware of this.

Tyrian was eight years old when things started to change.

Life wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. He belonged to one of three faunus families in his village, and they were all poor. The humans that surrounded them were mostly anti-faunus, or at least pitied the families. Tyrian learned very quickly that he was not a priority to the people he lived near. His parents worked nearly every hour of the day just to put food on the table every three days or so. Their home was a small one, with a single bedroom and a kitchen, as well as the outhouse behind their home that his father built. They were freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer. Tyrian had every reason to hate his existence.

But when his parents were home, things seemed so much different.

His mother _(heavens why cant he remember her name what was her name)_ was a small woman with raven hair. She was short enough that Tyrian was sure he would dwarf her in size by the time he was ten years old. Her face was encircled by feathers the color of charcoal, and the trail extended along her arms to her wrists, a side effect of the enormous black wings that she kept folded beneath a hand-knit cardigan on most days. Her eyes, the feature Tyrian recalls most fondly, were a green so bright that it hardly seemed real.

And how she would dote over her little scorpling. Despite the inability to buy gifts for birthdays and holidays, she would spoil Tyrian with the burnt sweetbreads she would take home from her job at the bakery. Her son's need for meat in his diet was a financial problem, but whenever she had the money, she would buy the best cut of meat she could afford for Tyrian. This only happened three or four times in his entire childhood, but he cherishes those memories to this day. When his hair grew long enough, she would spend hours combing, braiding, weaving it into beautiful patterns. She doted and cuddled, encouraged every little dream and aspiration of her son's.

_Tyrian wonders if she would be proud of him now._

His father, though kind at his heart, was almost the exact opposite of his mother. The man's skin was a pale blue, and shimmered with scales that cascaded down his back to cover the reptilian tail behind him. His eyes were a startling yellow, his hair thin and auburn. Tyrian suspects this is where his height came from; the man was nearly six and a half feet tall, which made piggy-back rides the highlight of the week.

But where his mother was kindhearted, Tyrian's father had been twisted.

The man had grown up in Menagerie, and when he reached the mainlands, his outlook on the world changed drastically. Tyrian's father would tell him horror stories of what humans would do to faunus--and what they did to him. He had the scars to prove it. Looking back, Tyrian suspects his father would have joined the White Fang in a heartbeat if a faction of the group was nearer to their home. Still, his father's anger towards humans saved Tyrian's life several times in his childhood, and the apprehension became instinct.

The spawn of the two faunus had been Tyrian, a random biological miracle. Usually when two faunus of different origin have a child, the result still errs on the more common side of animals. But Tyrian was special. His mother would always tell him that.

"You're special, my little scorpling," she would coo, wrapping a feathered arm around his shoulders. "my little miracle of nature."

Life wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but Tyrian was happy.

To this day, however, Tyrian doesn't know what caused the attack.

Though the scars from the Great War remained, smaller villages like his own were overlooked and practically untouched by it. Aside from the occasional lost Beowolf (which was easily disposed of) the Grimm never visited.

Tyrian was awoken as he assumes several children were that night.

"Tyrian! Tyrian, sweetheart, please wake up!" His mother. Distraught, scared, he vaguely remembers asking why Mama was so frightened. She picked him up in her arms and began to rock him.

"Mama, where's Baba?" he asked.

"Baba will be back, my little scorpling, Baba's coming," his mother shushed. "I need you to be quiet, okay baby?"

Tyrian nodded and buried his face in her neck.

And then he heard the screams. He realized why his mother was scared, why he wasn't able to see out the window, why Baba was missing.

Grimm.

"Mama--!" he began. She clamped a hand over his mouth, the most violent thing she'd ever done to him. He began to cry, but he dared not let out a sob.

His father came rushing in with a knife in his hand and a cut across his cheek. He called Tyrian's mother by her name _(what was it)_ , "--we need to go. Cellar's open. Come on."

_Tyrian remembered her name being so pretty. Why couldn't he remember it?_

His mother followed his father out to the back of the house, where the cellar door was set into the earth. Every house, even their small one, was equipped with underground storage. The Great War required better protection, and this was the easiest way to do it.

His father flung open the doors and his mother lowered Tyrian into the cold room. There was a blanket and a lit candle waiting for him, which must have been placed there by his father, and he hurried instinctively to it.

And then the doors shut behind him.

Panic set in and Tyrian flew to the door, slamming himself against the wood.

"Mama!" he shrieked. "Baba! Why is it locked?!"

He could hear his mother crying. "My little scorpling..." she sobbed, leaning close to the door to whisper to him. "Mama and Baba will be right back..." she promised. "You need to stay here. You need to stay safe."

"Mama, no, please--!"

"Tyrian!" she snapped. "Please." Her slender fingers slipped through the crack between the door and the earth, and Tyrian held onto them for dear life. "You have to stay here. I love you so much."

Her fingers slipped from his hand and her shadow moved away from the door. Tyrian felt a sob bigger than any he had ever uttered heave from his chest. He screamed as loud as he could, and, blinded by tears, began throwing himself against the doors in a desperate attempt to get them open.

In the moments when he would stop, he would look out the cracks in the wood. He watched Nevermores rip people in half, Beolwolves nearly rip people's faces off, King Taijitu swallow children whole.

Eventually, his candle burned out. It took him four hours, but the wood finally gave and Tyrian flung himself onto the earth just beyond the door. His body was sore and shaking from the tears and exertion. The village was silent except for the wind and his weak sobs.

With a bit of effort, Tyrian climbed out of the cellar and stood up shakily. He had to find his parents.

He stumbled through the decimated village, crying out for his parents. His voice sounded so lonely among the silence. He came across the bloodied corpse of one of their faunus friends, an old man with dark circles around his eyes and a ringed tail. Tyrian muttered a quiet prayer that his parents had taught him, the meaning lost on the child.

And then he found them.

They were splayed out among the rest of the dead, hands weakly intertwined as if they died holding one another. His mother looked like she was crying blood and her white nightgown was stained almost entirely red. His father's tail was limp and clawed to shreds. Blood poured from his mouth and his shirt was torn by an enormous set of bloody claws. Just behind their bodies was a set of hoof prints that were nearly as big as Tyrian was tall.

When they didn't wake up at their names, Tyrian tried shaking them. Still nothing. He even tried hitting his father's cheek, but that only caused a splatter of sticky, coagulating blood to fly from his lips and land on the stone path beneath him. Devoid of hope, Tyrian sat between their bodies, pulled his knees to his chest, and cried.

When the episode passed, Tyrian used the last of his strength to pull his parents' bodies closer to one another. He used his sleep shirt to wipe the blood from his mother's eyes and his father's mouth, then tucked the remains of his father's tail behind his legs to hide it. He went to the nearest well and came back with a bucket of water to clean the red stains from his mother's gown as best as he could. He splashed the rest on the stone to wash away the blood from the ground. With that finished, Tyrian laid down between his parents.

He pulled his mother's arm over him and curled into her side. Then he placed his father's arm over the both of them. They looked almost peaceful.

"Goodnight, Mama..." Tyrian whispered, turning his head to kiss hi mother's pale cheek. "Goodnight, Baba..." He turned the other was and kissed the end of his father's nose. "Sweet dreams..." he added.

Exhaustion finally overtook him, and Tyrian fell fast asleep in his parents' arms.

He's not sure how long he slept, but he was awoken by the feeling of a horse's hoof hitting his arm. He looked up, dazed and tired from crying and wearing himself out, and found himself before a caravan. He couldn't read yet, but the picture on the side of the wagon depicted a grinning young lady in glittering makeup and a matching leotard on a bar, a crowd of applauding people and a hungry lion far beneath her. A circus.

"Hey, hang on!" he heard someone shout. "Someone's alive!" He felt arms moving him, felt his parents' leave him.

"It--It's a kid!"

"Oh my god, what is that thing?!"

"The hell kinda tail is that?"

"Hey kid can you hear me?"

"Leave that thing here!"

"Who knows what it could do, my god!"

"Kid! Kid, can you hear me?! Hey!"

People surrounded him. Someone splashed water in his face. He felt hands on his stinger, but he was so worn out, so exhausted that...

"What's your name?" someone asked.

"T..."

"Shut up, they can speak!"

"Tyr... ian..."

Things went black again. He was on a bed in the caravan, people still surrounding him. One of them whispered the word "ringmaster" and Tyrian tried to speak, but nothing came out. Black. Someone was cleaning him. Black. Lights, there are lights, everywhere, where...? Black again.

White.

Life went on. The Deathstalker Boy was all that was left. Tyrian was painted up to look like the same monsters that killed his family, and he would put on a show to scare the audience. They'd put him in chains and he'd roar and snap at people. They'd make him do tricks. Make him "get loose" to be caught again. Make him hate his life before he was even twelve years old.

The ringmaster put bruises, cuts, scars on Tyrian's body. He forgot his last name. He forgot his parents' names. He forgot his village's name.

He was just Tyrian, the Amazing Deathstalker Boy.

When the Grimm came again, he was ready. His eyes burned as his system filled with venom, as irises turned from yellow to violet. He found himself happy for the first time in years as his tail tore through the ringmaster. Humans and monsters became one: if it got in his way, he killed it. Rage, sadness, fear, pain, they all melded together. When a Beowolf finally bested him, he was ready to die, happy to have lived before his final moments, but before it could tear him in two, it stepped back.

Every Grimm froze. The Beowolves cowered like scared pups, the Ursa lowered their heads, the King Taijitu unfurled and laid flat, the Deathstalker, the Nevermores--they were... dormant.

And then the sea of black and red parted. Inky smoke poured from the pathway and the shadows seemed to converge into a woman. Her dress was made from pure ebony, Tyrian was sure, her skin solid ivory, her eyes shimmering rubies. She was not human.

"Tyrian..." she whispered. "My little scorpling..." His heart fluttered. "Would you like to have a family again?" she asked.

Tyrian felt tears well in his eyes and he began sobbing. Unable to form a single word, he nodded desperately.

"Kneel." the creature ordered. Tyrian, still unable to read or write, didn't know the meaning of the word, but he somehow knew what to do and obeyed. Tears pooled at his feet. The creature knelt and held out her hands. Tyrian fell into her arms.

When she stood, the woman wrapped Tyrian tightly in her embrace. Her skin was like ice and her grip deadly, but Tyrian nuzzled into her neck and continued to cry.

"Would you like for me to be your mother?" she asked.

"Mama..." he whispered. He didn't see it, but the woman grinned.

The Grimm, satisfied with their destruction, dispersed, but never came within three feet of the woman and her child. She slunk back into the shadows, tailed by a young man in an Atlesian uniform. Tyrian was too happy to wonder who the man was, but the man glared at Tyrian with emerald eyes he hadn't seen in years.

"You are going to do great things, my little scorpling," his mother assured him. "This is promise you."

**Author's Note:**

> got a request for a fanfic or some art? hop on over to my tumblr!
> 
> http://colorinplatinum.tumblr.com/ask


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